The start signal hadn’t sounded, but the prohibitivefavourite to win the men’s 1,500-metre freestyle race, China’s Sun Yang, wasgone from his block and in the water.

And Ryan Cochrane, who’d had only a faint hope of a goldmedal coming in, must have thought: wait a minute. False start? Does this mean...?

His whole country was surely thinking it.

“I was so scared,” the 20-year-old Chinese said later.“It was all black before my eyes.”

Cochrane, though, said he wasn’t making any assumptions.

“I kind of assumed he wouldn’t be out, just because ofthe way he went into the water, but I was kind of surprised how quickly theygot us back on the blocks,” the 23-year-old from Victoria said Saturday night,after swimming the race of his life to hold off Beijing Olympic championOussama Mellouli and win the silver medal behind the world-record swim of theuntouchable Sun.

The referee, it seems, had asked the crowd to be quietafter the swimmers had taken their mark, and Sun toppled off the block.

“It is what it is. We prepare for anything,” Cochranesaid. “[Sun] was pretty pissed off by it, I think, but it’s such a little thingin the grand scheme, and it’s going to be 15 minutes of pain no matter what, so... he got his feet wet first.”

There was no raining on Cochrane’s mood after his silvermade it a Super Saturday for Canada — a gold-silver-bronze day that bumped theteam’s medal count to 10, for 11th-place in the total medals table.

“This is the happiest I’ve been after any race in mycareer,” he said. “I was just so thankful to know that there’s nothing else Icould have done.”

Truly Yang — who also won the 400 metres, a silver at 200and a bronze in the 4x200 relay — left in a hurry and never looked back.Cochrane hung with him for a while, but eventually settled into a second-placerace with Korea’s Park Taehwan, shed him about the halfway mark, and thenhunkered down for the grim battle to deny Mellouli.

With 100 metres left, it looked as though the Tunisianmight catch him, but Cochrane reached into his reserves and sprinted home in aCanadian record of 14 minutes, 39.63 seconds — less than 7/10ths of a secondahead of Mellouli, but well behind Sun, whose 14:31 beat his own world recordby more than three seconds.

“It was a tough fight the last 100 metres, but I alsoknew the first half felt so good that I was going to have some stuff left inthe tank,” said Cochrane. “When [Mellouli] passed me in Beijing, I wasn’texpecting it. This time, I was going to fight probably to the death to makesure he didn’t get ahead of me.

“But I did have memories of what it was like in Beijingwhen I was fighting for that third-place spot, so I knew I was going to have tosprint that last 50 — and that’s what we train every day for.

“I knew I had to be out hard, but I didn’t want to go outtoo hard and fall into a heap, I just wanted to be sure I didn’t leave anythingin the pool,” he said. “When I was feeling good around the 700-metre mark, Iknew it was time to test the waters every 100-150 metres, and it felt good everytime I did it, and it’s nice to say, because usually it feels terrible.

“I knew, going into it, ‘This is going to be anexcruciating swim.’ But it wasn’t like Beijing, where I hit the 1,100-metremark and I was in so much pain, I didn’t even know what to do.”

Cochrane’s unexpected bronze in Beijing at age 19salvaged what could have been a disastrous meet for Canada. This one capped aweek that was somewhat better, with Brent Hayden’s gritty bronze in the100-metre free and seven swimmers reaching finals.

But it was still the first silver medal by a Canadian inan Olympic pool since Marianne Limpert’s 200-metre individual medley atAtlanta, 16 years ago, and that’s hard to believe.

“It’s a double-edged sword, because part of me wanted tobe five seconds faster and vying for that world record,” Cochrane said.

“When I was young, I thought I could do anything, andthen the years go by and you keep on getting second place, and you think,‘Maybe this is the best I can do,’” he said, having followed up his Beijingbronze with runner-up medals at the 2009 and 2011 world championships.

“And I know this was second place, too, but I’m stillprogressing — to be faster than four years ago, without the [body]suits, Ithink is fantastic.”

He’s been right there, all along, and that’s why he wasas sure a thing as Canada had in the pool, coming in. Swimming Canada projected“two to three” medals for the London Games, but the second and third werehopes, rather than expectations. Cochrane was carrying those.

The 1,500 is about work, and mileage, and the ability tosuffer — and it’s less susceptible to the vagaries of a poor start or a roughturn or two, or five. It’s about stroke rate and stamina and stubborn tenacity.He had all that.

Cochrane had failed to qualify for the final of the 400metres on the opening day of this meet — a race in which he had given himselfan outside chance at a medal — “so I knew I had to go out with a bang or Iwasn’t going to be happy with the whole experience,” he said.

“The 400, I thought, was a lost opportunity, but there’sno point being devastated about it for days on end when you know you have yourbest race coming up. I underestimated how hard the mental side of this meetwould be. I thought with experience it would be easier; in the end it was a lotharder.”

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